by Blake Banner
“That is my initial feasibility study. What I want from you, Sheila, is that you read it and form an opinion. If you think it can be done, show it to Charles Cavendish and ask him for his opinion. That man has my deepest respect. He is not only a man with a heart and a soul, he has a brain too, and he makes all three of those things work together. If there is a flaw in the project, he will find it. But if it has a chance of flying, I know he’ll back it.”
She clasped her hands to her chest and shook her head.
“Mr. Bauer, I am overwhelmed. I will of course read it and show it to Mr. Cavendish.”
“And,” I added smoothly. “If he gives it the go-ahead, then I hope you will have lunch with me and go over the fine details, so we can start putting this thing together. Because, the thing is, Sheila, if it works once, we can use it as a model, again and again and again.”
She stared at me with wonder in her eyes, and for a moment I felt like a real heel. Then she opened the file and started going through it, examining the numbers, the diagrams and the drawings. After a while she closed the file again and laid her hand on it, like it was an ancient, sacred relic that might impart some blessing to her.
“Harry, I don’t know what to say. Bless you, and I thank the Universe for giving me this opportunity to work with you.” I had forgotten that Californians spoke like that sometimes and tried not to wince. “I will assuredly do what you say. Can I call you tonight if I have any questions?”
I took one of my cards from my wallet and handed it to her. As she took it I held on for a second and looked into her eyes.
“I knew my instincts were right about you, Sheila. You are a very special person… A very special woman.”
Her cheeks flushed pink and her blue eyes shone.
“Thank you, Harry. I promise I won’t let you down. And…” She hesitated. “I think you are a very special man.”
I stood. “I’ll be waiting for your call.”
She stood and nodded. “I’ll call you tonight.”
I let myself out and used the stairs to go down to the reception. There I took the Tiffany elevator down to the lobby. Out in the bright California sunshine I climbed in my car and sat for a minute staring at the traffic on Hill Street. There was an uncomfortable, nagging reproach in the back of my mind, that Sheila Newton did not deserve to be treated this way. She was a good, sincere person and I had used her badly.
I fired up the TVR and cruised back to Santa Monica. In my rearview mirror I was aware of a cream Toyota sedan keeping pace with me. I smiled to myself. Maybe the boys in the Air Force blue Ford were taking their lunch break. They followed me all the way down Venice Boulevard as far as Pacific Avenue. But when I was four blocks from my apartment they turned right onto Santa Monica Boulevard. Maybe they figured they knew I was going home, or maybe they had somebody watching my block. It didn’t matter much. As the brigadier had said, I was going to do precisely what I had told them I was going to do.
I parked out front and took the elevator to my apartment. I took a cold beer from the fridge, cracked it and went to stand on the terrace, to see if I could identify who was watching me. Before I could make up my mind, I saw a man, tall, strongly built, mid-thirties with short, fair hair turn in from Washington Avenue. He walked like he knew where he was going, and turned in again at the gate to my block. Maybe he lived there, but my gut told me he didn’t. So I wasn’t all that surprised when, three minutes later, my doorbell rang.
I’d already slipped my P226 in my waistband behind my back. So I went and opened the door. It was the guy I’d seen from the terrace and he was wearing a courteous smile on his face. He had jeans and a leather jacket, and hard, unfeeling eyes. I knew the type well.
He pulled a badge from his back pocket and showed it to me. It displayed a black knight chess piece on a quartered blue and gray background, laid over a crossed sword and a key in gold. Beneath it was a white scroll with a legend in blue that said, “Twenty-Fifth Air Force.”
“Captain Seth Campbell, Air Force Intelligence. Are you Harry Bauer?”
I nodded once, upward. “I already spoke to your Colonel James Armitage this morning.”
“Colonel Armitage is not with the Twenty-Fifth, sir. Can we talk?”
I stepped back to let him in and pointed toward the terrace.
“You want a beer?”
He flicked his eyes over me like he was curious. “No, thanks. I won’t keep you long.”
He didn’t go out to the terrace. He lowered himself onto the arm of the sofa, with his fists hanging between his thighs.
“Mr. Bauer, I’ll come straight to the point. What was the nature of your relationship with Colonel Jane Harris?”
“I already answered that question this morning.”
“Sure, but like I said, Colonel Armitage is not with the Twenty-Fifth, and to be honest, we need all the help we can get.”
I sighed and sat in the chair opposite him. What I told him was the truth; as much of it as I thought he should know. “We were friends, becoming closer. We had dinner at Keens, I took her to her hotel, watched her go through the door and I left. Whatever happened, happened after that.”
“Sir, I have to ask you, was there a professional dimension to your relationship?”
I raised an eyebrow. “She is an Air Force colonel, I’m a playboy. So, no.”
He smiled what you might call a bland smile.
“Mr. Bauer, when you were asked to leave the Special Air Service, because of your altercation with Captain Bill Hartmann of the CIA, and your attempted murder of Mohammed Ben-Amini, you arrived in New York with very little money. Yet within a short time you had become a very wealthy man. Now, I am asking you whether you acquired that money through some kind of association with Colonel Jane Harris.”[1]
I stared him hard in the eye before answering.
“Captain Campbell, I have no idea what you are talking about. But whatever it is you have in your mind, you’re fishing, and, if you’ll forgive the tortured metaphor, you’re fishing up the wrong tree. I told Colonel Armitage, and now I’m telling you, whatever happened to Jane, happened after she went through the door at the Hyatt. How I made my money has nothing to do with Jane, or with you.”
He gave his head a little twist. “You don’t seem very keen to help a woman who was, in your own words, becoming something more than a friend, Mr. Bauer.”
“Correction.” I pointed at him. “You don’t seem real keen to find your colonel. You seem a lot more interested in digging up dirt on me. And if Bill Hartmann is behind this, you tell him to come and ask me himself. I promise to give him a comprehensive answer.”
He smiled and stood. I stood too. “I am sorry to have wasted your time, Mr. Bauer. And I assure you, we are doing everything in our power to chase down every possible lead.”
The blade was in his hand before he had finished talking. If I hadn’t been expecting it, I would not have seen it. He lunged at my belly. I sidestepped to my right and simultaneously smashed the beer bottle into the side of his head. He weaved and it only grazed his temple. He slashed twice at my face and I backed up, pulling the Sig Sauer from my belt. It didn’t deter him. He closed in, ducking inside my guard and drove the blade at my wrist. I felt the hard steel graze my knuckles as I pulled back again. He was good, fast and strong, and kept coming.
I paced him two steps, pulling back fast as he slashed and drove at my face and belly, missing by inches. Then I broke the rhythm and drove a powerful side kick into his belly. It threw him back and he fell sprawling on the floor. I trained the Sig on him and snarled, “Stay put!”
The knife was still in his hands and his eyes said he really wanted to use it on me.
“That was a big mistake, Bauer. You should have killed me. You’ll regret you didn’t.”
“You are not Twenty-Fifth Air Force. Who are you?”
“Go screw yourself. I don’t know what the hell you’re planning, Bauer, but with your missing colonel, and the interest the Air Force h
as in you right now, the last thing you need is the cops sniffing around because you shot a man to death in your apartment.” He got to his feet. “Go ahead, shoot me. See how long it takes before the cops are crawling like termites all over you and this apartment block.”
“I’m going to ask you one more time, who do you work for?”
“And I’m going to tell you again, screw you. There is only one armed man here, Bauer, and that’s me. Because that gun is as good as useless to you.”
He had obviously convinced himself of what he said, because he rushed me, slashing savagely at my arms. The downside was that he was right. I really did not want the cops crawling all over me and my apartment right then, neither did I want the Air Force inquiring any more deeply into my relationship with the colonel. So a shot from the Sig would kill a lot more than Captain Seth Campbell.
The upside was that this time I knew he was coming, and I knew what he was going to do. As he slashed down at my wrist, I stepped to the side and trapped the back of his wrist with my right hand. With the left I smashed the butt of the gun into his head three, four, five times, hammering down hard. He stumbled and fell to his knees. I slipped the Sig in my belt again, grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm with both hands till he dropped the knife.
I kicked the blade away. Then, in a blur of violent speed, he yanked his hand free and ran, stumbling for the terrace. I went after him and kicked his feet from under him. He sprawled on the floor, instantly twisting on his back and kicking savagely at me with his heels as he scrambled backward. Then he was at the door to the terrace and clambering to his feet again. I took one long stride and kicked him hard in the chest. He crashed out onto the terrace and lay groaning on his back.
I went out after him and knelt with one knee on his chest.
“Let me tell you what I am going to do, Captain. I’m going to grab you by your heels and drag you back inside. I’m going to spread refuse sacks on the floor and put towels on top of them, and then I’m going to lay you on top of the towels. After that I am going to carve you up, one joint, one tendon at a time, until you start talking to me. So you had better get started now, before I lose my patience. Who are you, and who do you work for?”
He gave a tiny nod and a slow blink. “OK, all right, but I need water, I’m choking.”
His breathing was labored and wheezing. He looked in real bad shape. I checked him for weapons, stood and moved to the sliding glass door. Maybe I should have expected it, but the truth was, it was the last thing I would have expected him to do. I heard a shuffle, stopped and turned.
He was on his feet again, but he wasn’t coming at me. He was clutching at the balcony wall, then he leaned over it and fell. The whole thing was completely silent, all but for the nauseating thud when he hit the ground.
I didn’t even pause to curse. I ran, out the door and up the last flight of steps to the roof terrace. I unlocked the door, and took the stairs three at a time going back down again. Then I locked myself in my apartment again and methodically wiped every fingerprint off everything he had touched. I wiped his knife and put it in my pocket, and put my Sig back in my bedside drawer. Finally I settled on the sofa, barefoot, with my shirt undone, the Cavendish Foundation file by my side and the TV turned on, while I listened to the sirens wailing, arriving outside.
Five
I stood on the balcony for a while, watching the cops and the ME poring over the dead body, pointing up at what could have been my terrace or the roof. The paramedics loaded the corpse onto a gurney and rattled it across the lawn and out to the waiting ambulance. The uniforms cordoned off the area and started to inspect the shrubs and bushes around the body, and the plainclothes cop, in a beige jacket, a blue shirt and a red tie, walked inside. Two minutes later my doorbell rang.
When I opened the door he was there, holding his badge. He looked vaguely bored and slightly hostile.
“Detective Frank Costello, Los Angeles Police Department. May I ask your name please, sir?”
“Sure, I’m Harry Bauer.”
“Did I see you looking down from your balcony just now, Mr. Bauer?”
I nodded. “Yup, that poor guy. Did he fall?”
His eyes were hard and suspicious and flicked past my shoulder. “That’s what we are trying to establish. Do you mind if I have a look inside?”
“Not at all.” I stepped back and let him in. “I can’t tell you much. I was watching TV and reading. I didn’t realize anything had happened till I heard the sirens.”
He seemed not to hear me, walked around the apartment, poked his nose in the bedrooms, the bathrooms and the kitchen before stepping out onto the terrace and peering down, then up toward the roof and back down again.
He turned and looked me hard in the eye. “Did you know the deceased, Mr. Bauer?”
I was surprised by the question and let my face say so.
“Well, it’s hard to tell from three floors up, but he didn’t look familiar.”
“This your apartment?”
“I’m borrowing it from a friend in New York. I’m only here for a few days.”
“What’s your business in LA?”
“I’m having meetings with the Cavendish Foundation, regarding some projects.”
“Who’s your friend in New York?”
“Oh, Brigadier Alexander Byrd.”
He nodded a few times and made a note, repeating, “Brigadier, huh?”
I smiled as blandly as I could and followed him back into the living room. There he stopped, looking around again. I saw his eyes fall on the Cavendish report. He looked unhappy, like he’d really wanted to find a pool of blood or a couple of severed limbs.
“You didn’t hear anything? Anything odd, see anybody…?”
“To tell you the truth, Detective, I got in last night at five AM, and at eleven I had an appointment at the foundation. By the time I got home, I settled myself on the sofa with the report, switched on the TV and fell asleep. I was awakened by the sirens when you guys arrived.”
He nodded a few more times and left. I saw him start up the stairs to the roof and closed the door. I sat a while, wondering whether I had convinced him, decided I would never know and went to have another shower and change my clothes.
After lunch I spent the afternoon at Angels Fund Raisers in Westwood. They had the top floor of a low-rise office block at the corner of Westwood Boulevard and Wilkins Avenue. The first half hour I spent explaining the project to a guy with sandy hair and a beige Hugo Boss jacket. His name was Simon and he had Armani jeans that somebody had ironed for him. When I mentioned that the Cavendish Foundation were very interested in the project he went away and came back with Neil, who had a ponytail, an Adam’s apple and carefully careless stubble. We explained the project to him. They both told each other the project was “super, super” and Neil went away to get Shauna, because Shauna was the boss and had collaborated with the Cavendish Foundation before.
Shauna Cooper had very blonde hair, very blue eyes and very red lips. She also thought the project was super and promised me she would have her top people, including herself, work on some proposals for fundraising and get back to me the next day. She said maybe we could do lunch. I told her I had never done lunch before. I had had it and I had eaten it, I had on a couple of occasions almost been it, but I had not as yet done it.
She laughed like I was the funniest person on the planet and told me that was super.
On the way back to my apartment I stopped at the Brentwood Place shopping mall on Wilshire Avenue. There I bought myself half a dozen burners and, back in the car, in the copper light of early evening, I called the brigadier.
“How is it going, Harry.”
“That depends. The project is moving ahead as planned.”
“Good, but?”
“When I got back from the meeting with Sheila, a guy came to see me. He claimed to be from Twenty-Fifth Air Force and had a real badge to prove it. He wanted to talk to me about my relationship with the colonel.”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Because you’d already had the visit from Colonel Armitage, just a couple of hours before.”
“Yeah, well, it gets weirder than that. When I made it clear I had nothing to tell him, he pulled a knife on me and tried to kill me.”
“Did you kill him?”
“I tried not to. I was kind of keen to talk to him. He obviously didn’t feel the same way, because he jumped over the balcony and died of a severe case of gravity.”
“Good heavens…” He said it with a complete lack of feeling, like he was reading the paper while talking to me.
“I can tell you’re shocked,” I said. “The cops came to see me.”
“You handled them?”
“Yeah, but all these people looking for the colonel are bringing down a lot of interest on me. I’m planning to kill a senator in Los Angeles and I have the Air Force and the Los Angeles Police Department breathing down my neck while I try to do it.”
“Well, there’s not a lot we can do about that right now. Develop your front, be seen around a lot with the Newton girl and with the fundraisers. Enjoy being a playboy for a bit. If you do it well enough, you may dispel the suspicion. You know we’ll cover your expenses.”
“Thanks. What about this guy who tried to kill me?”
“It’s a shame you let him jump. There’s a good chance he knew where the colonel is being held.”
“They might try again…”
“If they do, try not to kill them this time. It would be very helpful to interrogate them.”
I held the phone in my hand and scowled at it.
“Right,” I said, and made no effort to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “I’ll keep you posted.”
He made a “Hmm…” sound. “No need to fill me in on every detail. Just the important developments.”
“Right. You have a good evening.”
“You too. Take one of those women out. Be seen to be having fun.”
“Thanks.” I hung up and rumbled slowly back to the apartment, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror and the other on the streets around me and the wing mirrors. The blue Ford sedan was with me. But as before it peeled off before I got home. I parked near the main entrance to the block and went in fast.
